Chapter54

The word came out so suddenly that it caught him completely off guard, making him stop and turn back around with a bright expression he couldn't hide. "Really?"
She actually jumped a little at the sudden shift in his tone, her ears shooting up while she stared at him with wide eyes.
'What is wrong with this human,' she thought, pressing a hand to her chest while her heart kicked from the surprise. 'One second he's calm, the next he's smiling like an idiot. So strange.'
She took a small step back, holding up both hands while her ears pinned flat. "Can you please back up a little?"
"Right, sorry," he said, taking a quick step back and rubbing the back of his neck. "Got a little carried away there." 
He cleared his throat, forcing his expression to settle. "Anyway, we should go rank up a bit so we can actually start making some real money."
He turned back around and kept walking, letting the conversation drop while his attention shifted inward to the system panel floating at the edge of his vision.
The stream tab was active, viewer count sitting at a steady twenty, which was still small but enough to keep the Soul Energy trickling in.
'Let's see what's actually going on with this thing,' he thought, tapping through the menus while his feet carried him forward on autopilot.
[ Stream Status: Active ]
[ Viewers: 20 ]
[ Soul Energy: 15 ]
[ Fragment Recovery: 0.001% ]
He read over the numbers again, noticing the small upward arrows next to a few of them.
'Okay, so viewers are climbing, and Soul Energy is generating,' he thought, tapping on the Soul Energy section to see what was actually affecting it.
A short breakdown appeared under it.